Students Can Be Co-Creators, from Shakespeare to YouTube

Teachers often think that they have to create all of their classroom materials. If teachers can specify the learning goal and the type material that they want, give the students an example, and give those students ample time such as a week to find or produce the material, then students can create many classroom resources.

Students can find still images. A high school English teacher talks about how different directors interpret the same character in various forms. She gives the students a list of many characters from a play such as Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and has them pick a character such as Oberon, King of the Fairies. She asks the students to find the web address of three different still images of the same character and to print out the still images. She shows them how to search for images using Google Images. She asks students to add these images to the class wiki section in which she has listed the characters' names. When the assignment is due, she brings up the images and has the class discuss the various differences for each characters and what these differences show about the director's interpretation. She may have the student who found the particular images for a certain character lead that discussion in the differences and similarities. Furthermore, primary students may be asked to bring in two books that show the same animal, such as dog, in two different ways such as the dog books of Clifford and the Big Parade and Hondo & Fabian.

Students can be asked to find video examples of what they are learning. A high social studies teacher gives the students a list of the different economic terms in the unit and asks students to find examples of a term from TV, movies or YouTube. He explains that he only wants short two to four minute clips that focus directly on giving an example of the term. A student remembers a clip from the TV show "Burn Notice" on the law of supply and demand in the negotiation of hostages, goes to hulu.com to find the show, and determines the start and ending time location within the show. The student writes out the web address, the exact time in the show when the clip begins, how long the clip is, annotates what this clip shows about finance term, and posts it to the class wiki.

Students can create a list of web resources that provide alternative examples or exercises. The teacher realizes that some students may need another way of understanding the concept or practicing the concept. She asks her students to find two to three websites and to explain how each will help learners to understand the learning concept. A Language Other Than English teacher asks her students to find vocabulary practice for topical vocabulary. She shows her students how to search using Boolean searching such as ESL +vocabulary +house. The students find three websites that will help them to practice in learning the words. They post the topic and the web addresses to the class blog.

The teacher can provide the students with a digital camera or a camcorder to record information for the class. A middle school science teacher has his students take turns in taking digital camera images of various physical and biological aspects of a local waterfall and in using a camcorder to record experiments about the physical aspect of the water. Back in class over the next week the teacher and students study the recorded visual data. Also, as part of a social studies unit on neighborhoods elementary students can use a digital camera or camcorder to record what makes their own neighborhood special. One student arranges for a Skype video conference so that his parent can show the neighborhood.

The learners can produce games and quizzes for the classroom. A middle school Spanish teacher assigns each student a grammatical concept that they have to make into a learning game. One student creates a game for verb forms with 3x5 cards, while another designs a tutorial and quiz on direct objects with Power Point. A primary teacher has students create math shape pattern quizzes (circle square circle square circle ?) for their classmates. Some students draw them and some use a computer drawing program to create the shapes.

Help your students to be co-creators of learning materials for your classroom!

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle focuses on assessing and improving student learning through low- and high-tech tools.

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